similar sort of accent. It was possible.
Oh my God. It was all right there in front of me.
I was leaning forward, elbows on my knees, my head throbbing, and I realized I was looking directly at the walk path.
At the butt Dev had just put out.
I scanned down the pathway, searching for him, but there were only a few stray pedestrians in sight, not him.
I bent down and picked it up between my fingers.
My stomach started to climb its way up my throat.
Salem. Salem was the same brand as the one left outside my door!
I started to feel the sweats come over me, recalling those horrible images of Sherry Ann Frazier in Michigan. The police pictures of Walter Zorn strangled. The eye carved gruesomely into his tongue.
Could Dev be the one who had called me? Allied with Susan Pollack?
With Houvnanian.
Jesus, I told myself, calm down. This could all just be your own crazy paranoia, Jay. Dev could have just as easily bummed that butt from someone down the road. I stood up and looked down the path again. I almost felt him watching me, observing me coming to the conclusion. Enjoying this! I wasn’t quite sure what to do next. Call Sherwood?
It would just be another of those countless uncorroborated fears: Susan Pollack at the rock with Evan; the black or dark blue Kia outside Charlie’s apartment; my brother’s thirty-year-old lyrics echoed by Houvnanian.
This time I needed something more. Something real.
And suddenly I realized that I might have something more. Something that could pin Dev to this.
I wrapped the butt in some paper and headed back to my room.
I hurried, my heart beating rapidly now. I looked back around, like he was watching me out there. Toying with me.
I got to my wing of the motel and bounded up the outside flight of stairs. I hurried down the hall and jammed the card key into the lock. It took a couple of times for it to open and I let the door shut behind me, switching the metal bolt, just to be sure.
I went over to the bed and took the book off my night table.
Greenway’s book.
I flipped it open, skimming to where I wanted to go. My blood certain that this was it.
I located the insert of photographs. All the shots of Houvnanian and his other conspirators. The evidence photos: the guns, the knives, bloody clothing. Their VW van.
I’d been through them all before.
I searched until I found the photos taken on the ranch. There were two or three of the “family” all gathered around-drifters, hippies, outcasts, as they were in their days there. Making music. Working the farm. Gethsemane. Their paradise, before their world collapsed.
One shot was of a group sitting out on boulders they had cleared from a field. The same one I had searched for my brother’s face only days before.
I recognized a younger Susan Pollack. She was there.
As were Sarah Strasser and Carla Jean Blue, who had participated in the killings.
And some other names I recognized.
But no Dev. He wasn’t there!
I skipped a few photos ahead. There was another group shot of them, this time clearing brush for their vegetable garden. I’d read that there was always a lot of work that had to be done there. Two of the gals were raking soil. Carla Jean again. And Tel. And another guy in a long ponytail, planting, who looked vaguely familiar. But when I checked, his name was Scott Oulette.
It wasn’t him.
Three or four others were standing around holding tools. None of them even resembled Dev.
Damn.
I was about to give up when behind them I noticed someone perched on a small, dilapidated tractor.
My breath stopped. It was like a hand had put its icy fingers around my heart-and squeezed. I bore in on the face.
And I felt my blood about to explode.
It was the same person, except his hair was long then, a thin dark beard on his chin, wearing a bandana. He was grinning innocently, one arm on the wheel, but I could see it, as clearly as I could see the faces of my own kids when they were young.
I looked among the credits for a name.
And I read it twice, just to make sure I had seen it correctly.
Devin Dietz (on tractor).
I put down the book and just sat there for a while, everything slowly sinking in. I knew I had to call. I fumbled in my pocket for my phone. I located my previous call-to Sherwood-and pressed Redial.
He answered on the second ring, sighing when he saw who it was from. “What’s going on there, doc?”
“Susan Pollack’s accomplice,” I said, trying to hold my voice together. “ I know who it is! ”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
S herwood grabbed his gun off the kitchen counter and strapped on his holster. He’d made a vow, a few days back, he wasn’t sure precisely when. Maybe it was after Pelican Bay. Or when he’d heard about the lyrics to Charlie’s song. Or maybe it went all the way back to that dollar bill in Thomas Greenway’s stomach.
Or maybe back to the doc asking what that new liver had been for
…
If it was going to end in a fight, he’d be the one to end it.
He put on his jacket and touched the picture of Dorrie good-bye, pressing his fingers to her smile, just as he did every time he went out on the job.
“The guy’s a panhandler,” the doc had said, excited. “Near my hotel. He’s pushed his way into my life. I didn’t realize it-but for the past few days, I think he’s been stalking me.”
“Stay where you are,” Sherwood had instructed him. “Whatever you do, don’t leave. I’ll be right there.”
It was time to end this thing-and now.
He headed out the kitchen door. His Camry was parked in the drive outside. He had about a fifteen-minute ride from where he lived to the Cliffside Suites motel. He needed to warn the patrol car he had stationed outside Charlie’s apartment to be on alert, but he decided he might as well do it from the car, on his way.
He crossed around to the driver’s side, this weird sensation flashing through him: how Jay Erlich had wormed his way into his life, past his defenses. It had been a long time since he had let anyone in. One day there would be very little he would miss in this life. His friends had all moved on, down to San Diego or Arizona. The people he really loved were gone. But this past week… He chuckled. Something had awakened inside him. Something he hadn’t felt in a long while. Something vital. Over people he had never even heard of or given a rat’s ass about just a week before.
Funny, he thought to himself, how these things go. You never know what’s really important to you, until-
As he reached for the door handle, he heard a rustle from behind him.
Then he felt the most excruciating shock of pain cleave deep into his back.
The next thing he knew he felt the pavement, cold and firm against his face. Something sharp and body- splitting deep in his back. The air rushed out of him. He didn’t know what had happened, only that he couldn’t move and that it was bad. He tried to inhale, but it was like there was a hole in his air sac, his breaths leaking out of his back.
Turn over.
